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Who We Are

urbz was founded in 2008 in Mumbai by Rahul Srivastava, Geeta Mehta and Matias Echanove. We are now a collective of urban researchers and practitioners based in various parts of the world.

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Crew

Architect

Andrés Sánchez

Architect, Anthropologist

Melissa Martinez Cañadulce

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With the support of the @rearc.institute, urbz has been co-designing an intervention within a shared habitat in a mangrove forest surviving in a dense and concretised city. ‘The Garden of Festivities’ is a project that attempts to unite livelihood concerns with an ecological imagination that grows from the Kolis collective, ancestral knowledge and expertise.

The first step of the project is a participatory landscape intervention on the last remaining commons within a habitat they are struggling to preserve.

Read the full article on urbz.net, link in the bio!

#CommunityLedDesign #KoliHeritage #EcologicalUrbanism #ParticipatoryDesign #MumbaiCoastline #MangroveConservation

Continuamos aprendiendo de los procesos diversos en la ciudad de Cali. Junto con @lomeritos.siloe y @camino_albarrio hemos podido comprender sus proceso e iniciar el apoyo a un proyecto de Espacio Experimental de Música y una Cocina Comunitaria. Estas organizaciones a través de sus procesos consolidan experiencias de participacion colectivas valiosas en el marco del ejercicio realizado por urbz y @somoscali500. #cali #participation #community #homegrownneighbourhood

Thank you Azure magazine for featuring urbz!

The urbz, Mumbai team along with the Dharavi Koli Jamat and many members from the community have been working on the ABCD of Koliwada project, made possible by the @rearc.institute.

Samidha Patil and Kareena Kochery, spoke to @novakovicto from @azuremagazine about the embeddedness of the practice, reductionist conceptions of places as 'slums' or 'informal', and the participatory methodology of urbz.

Check out azuremagazine.com to read the full article. Or if you can, get yourself a copy! The issue features five conversations with creatives from around the globe. Can't wait to get our copies!

Dharavi has creativity and diversity deeply embedded into its landscape. It houses schools, hospitals, mosques, temples, pottery studios, craftsmen, leather industries, textile workshops, food production units, markets, people from all over India and much more. This mix creates a unique urban settlement, facilitating interactions and arrangements that are just as unique. Dharavi combines spatial density with temporal intensity - if no one quite understands how so many people can be accommodated over the 590 acres of Dharavi, it is even harder to figure out how people manage their time. Days seem long enough to juggle jobs, businesses, industries, social work, friendships, festivals, carnivals, commerce, community, families, children, and drawn-out chai breaks.

Our project, 1000 Voices, aims to understand this grand terrain through the perspective of people, through their presence and activities, and keep on reproducing it day after day.

Click on the link in the bio to read the collection!

Update on the Street Lighting Project in Dharavi Koliwada

In January 2025, the urbz team found themselves at one of the world’s largest shipbreaking yards. Why did we end up here?

As part of the ABCD of Koliwada project, we have been collaborating with local residents on the Street Lighting project, a need expressed by many inhabitants, especially women. The pilot phase was first implemented on one of Dharavi Koliwada’s pedestrian-friendly streets. This round of testing shed some ‘light’ on issues we had to resolve to improve the pilot. Our daily walks through the neighbourhood became moments of connection, residents shared how the streetlights made them feel safe, while also pointing out that many of the pilot prototypes we had installed had not withstood the monsoons. We urgently needed a financially sustainable and long-lasting, weatherproof solution. The shipbreaking yard in Alang offered exactly that, and more.

Alang’s shipbreaking yard is a global hub where parts of recycled ships from around the world are redistributed into local economies. With their deep sea-faring history, many Kolis have worked on ships, strengthening their bond with the sea. The bulkhead lights we sourced from retired ships serve a practical purpose and carry echoes of these maritime stories.

Together with local electricians Vicky and Ankush, our team is replacing the faulty prototypes with these durable, repurposed lights.

This project is supported by @rearc.institute

Stay tuned for more updates…

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